One of the main reasons behind my resistance to purchasing this fancy baby coconut; they are very difficult to find without ordering them online. The biggest focus of AtV's recipes is using "easy to find" ingredients. Because I want everyone to enjoy the food I love, and hard-to-find ingredients will definitely hinder anyone from making a recipe - no matter how yummy it may appear.

However - with their rising popularity, the young coconut is becoming increasingly more available in local natural foods stores, sometimes even found in the frozen fruit section as well.

Young Thai Coconut lovers, don't get too excited! I won't be using these guys in my kitchen very often, and if I do (with the exception of today's recipe) I promise to do my very best to offer substitute options!

Important Notes About Today's Recipe

About the Coconut: Before you get started, for those of you like myself who have limited experience with opening Coconuts - I recommend watching this short and very informative video (courtesy of Elaina Love):

Be sure to save your Coconut Water - you'll need it for this recipe too!!

Getting ready to crack my Coconut open...

My aftermath: 1 cup Coconut meat and 1&1/2 c Coconut Water

About the Cashews: Next you'll want to soak (for roughly 8 hours) 3/4 cup of raw Cashews - this will give you the amount needed for soaked Cashews in today's recipe = 1 and 1/4 cup. Remember, always measure your Cashews after they've been soaked, because they swell and expand in size. 3/4 cup of dried Cashews should amount to roughly 1 and 1/2 cup of wet/soaked Cashews.

Not a Fan of Coconut? Even if you're not a fan of coconut, you can add more Lime juice (just remember to subtract the same amount of water for any additional liquid you add) and you may discover that you're more of a fan than you thought you were. Young Coconut has a very subtle flavor, and a surprisingly creamy texture all on it's own. In my humble opinion, I think everyone should give this yummy little cream pie a taste. I hope you will!

Tools you will Need:

Food Processor

Fruit Scoop or Ice-cream Scooper (this will help you easily remove the soft coconut meat)

Muffin/Cupcake Mold

---

Final Recipe Disclaimer

This recipe includes a LOT of Coconut based ingredients. It's kind of fun and exciting!

I think I've counted 7 different forms of coconut total. I am in no way a dessert professional, so this recipe is fairly simple, and really revolves around the flavors and texture, not the presentation aspect. Although it looks a lot prettier than I anticipated. Dessert decorating is hard, people!

I used an icing/piping bag to fill my crust shells, but you could also use a plastic baggy with one of the corners snipped off.

Get your crusts out of the freezer (they should stay there until you are ready to fill them, that's an order!)

Fill them up!

The reason why you only see 6 mini cream pies here is because I'm an airhead and forgot to oil 3 of the muffin molds - when I tried taking the crusts out they broke. *sadness* It's okay though! I reshaped them and they're back in the freezer firming up. If you're not using paper muffin liners you better oil that tin!

Sprinkle your dried Coconut and Lime zest on top, and pop those cuties back into the freezer until you're ready to serve/eat them!

Remove them 10-15 minutes before serving and enjoy!

For an extra zing of flavor: Serve with a small wedge of lime and encourage your guests to "squeeze" their lime over the top of their cream pie.

In my case I'll be transporting these little buggers in a cooler over to my friend, Rachel's (of One Pretty Thing) house in a little bit. Yay for bringing surprise treats to your awesome friends!

I hope you guys enjoyed my adventure with Young Thai Coconut, thanks again to my gal pal Erin for the recipe request! Wishing you all a wonderful tasty weekend.